


C is for Cookie (That's Good Enough For Me)

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Baby mad scientists, Cookies, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Kinga knows what she wants, and what she wants is cookies, minor bonehead headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 20:11:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15420669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: An abbreviated history of Kinga taking advantage of Max's baking skills.





	C is for Cookie (That's Good Enough For Me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smitshappens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smitshappens/gifts).



> This is very, very silly. I have no excuses besides being hungry for cookies and it having been too hot to bake cookies for weeks now.
> 
> I had to have Ray make a cameo. He is, after all, my favorite Bonehead, and this fic is for his creator.

“What happens if you put it in faster?” Kinga asked, and then reached up to tap her father’s hand. The careful trickle he was pouring from the beaker suddenly became the entire contents splashing out, and an explosive reaction filled the air with a thick but fragrant cloud that coated both daughter and father in pale pink dust. “Whoaaaa,” she said, clapping her hands in excitement. “It smells like cookies.”

“You can’t do science like that, sweetie,” Clayton chided his offspring, putting the empty beaker down and waving his hands to disperse the smoke. “It makes a big difference whether you drip it in or dump it in. The results are dependent on method as well as ingredients.”

“Okay, but… can I have cookies now?” Clayton sighed heavily and tugged one of her pigtails.

“Do you think they’re done already?”

“Maybe?”

“How long do you think we’ve been doing this?”

“I dunno, like an hour and seventy minutes.”

“It’s been fifteen minutes if that.”

“Well, that’s _forever_ and I want cookies _now_.”

“They’re not ready yet.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there is no possible way to make cookies from scratch in fifteen minutes.”

“Frank can do it.”

“No, he can’t.”

“Then Max can do it!”

“Max can’t do anything Frank can’t do,” Clayton said, and Kinga’s nose crumpled.

“That’s not true. Max is the better version!”

“Oh, and do you think you’re the better version of me?”

“Ah- _duh_ , Daddy.” Shaking his head, he pulled her other pigtail and she stuck her tongue out at him. “I mean, I am a girl so I’m automatically better than all of you.”

“My little feminist. Where’d you hear that?”

“Grandma, where else?” Clayton pinched the bridge of his nose under where his glasses sat. Of course his mother was trying to infect his daughter’s mind with propaganda. Then again, he couldn’t exactly tell her she was not better than them because she was a girl. He’d never anticipated this when he decided to go through the trouble of making sure his offspring was female… but he couldn’t exactly pretend that Pearl’s disappointment in her son hadn’t factored into his decision making. That still didn’t mean he liked leaving Kinga alone with his mother for any length of time. “Can I go check about the cookies?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Uh... not about cookies. Sorry, Daddy.”

“I guess this experiment is over anyways,” he said, and she ran off to the kitchen before he could say anything else. She ran directly into Frank and bounced off him, laughing maniacally and leaving a pink dust print of her face on his apron, and Max caught her before she fell.

“Cookies?”

“Fifteen more minutes,” Frank said, and Kinga sighed dramatically. 

“That’s _forever._ ”

“It’s not forever,” Max said. “It’s not even the length of a whole cartoon episode.”

“But I’m _starving_.”

“If you’re hungry, you can have an apple,” Clayton said, following her into the kitchen after he’d cleaned the dust off his glasses, and she turned a look of utter betrayal on him.

“You’re out of line, mister.” Kinga pointed a warning finger at her father, whose jaw dropped.

“ _Excuse_ me?” The blood rushed out of Clayton’s face.

“That’s what Grandma told me to say when I don’t like what you tell me,” she chirped, and Max had to stifle a snicker into his oven mitt. Clayton just closed his eyes and sighed. Hearing his mother’s words come out of his daughter’s mouth was stomach-turning. 

“Fine. Stay hungry until you burn your mouth on cookies, for all I care.”

“You want to split a sandwich with me, Kinga?” Max asked. “I’m a little hungry too. I was thinking about peanut butter and jelly.”

“Jam,” she said immediately, and Max crossed his arms. 

“But I like grape jelly.”

“But I like strawberry jam.”

“I’ll make it with jam if I can make it with crunchy peanut butter,” he said, and she wrinkled her nose. “You have to compromise sometimes if you want to get any part of what you really want, you know.”

“I shouldn’t have to,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I should get my way all the time because I’m the best.”

“That’s not how the world works, kiddo,” Frank said. “And compromising about peanut butter is better than compromising about organ removal.”

“We don’t compromise,” Clayton said. “I always get my way with you.” Frank rolled his eyes but didn’t argue.

“I guess this is the question, then…” Max paused until he had Kinga’s full attention, and he gave her a solemn look. “Do you want to be like your dad, or do you want to be better than your dad?”

“Better,” Kinga said. “Duh. I already am.”

“If you’re already better than him, you have to prove it.” She thought about it for a second, one foot tapping the floor while she pondered it, and then she nodded once.

“You can use the crunchy peanut butter.”

“Thank you.” Max started assembling the sandwich with her watching him closely to make sure he didn’t do it wrong. He made sure to get extra chunks of strawberry in the jam on her side of it, and cut it diagonally like he knew she liked. “There you go. Want some milk?”

“No, I want juice,” she said through a mouthful of PB&J.

“You can’t dip chocolate chip cookies into juice…”

“Watch me.”

“Okay, if you say so.” They only had orange juice, and he knew she was going to dip the cookies and he also knew she was going to hate it, but he poured her a glass anyways, just as the timer for the cookies went off.

“ _Cookies!_ ” Her shriek made everyone in the room wince, and Frank pulled the tray of cookies out of the oven and set it on top of the stove. They were picture-perfect, round and golden brown and studded with chunks of chocolate.

“Hey, these look a lot better than our last batch,” he said, and ruffled Max’s curls. “You’re definitely learning from your mistakes.” Max ducked his head and wrinkled his nose, but he couldn’t hide his pleased look at being praised. 

“What’s the next step after I master chocolate chip?” 

“Snickerdoodle,” Kinga said. “And then triple chocolate chip! More chocolate!”

“I don’t think you need _more_ chocolate,” Clayton said, and smacked her hand gently when she reached for the cookies. “Kinga! Do you have any idea how hot that tray is?”

“Uh… like eleventy thousand degrees?”

“So do you think it’s a good idea to touch it?”

“But I want a cookie now.”

“It’s probably three hundred degrees now,” Max said. “And the cookies are probably about the same. You’d burn your mouth so bad we’d have to stuff it with cotton and wrap it shut until you healed.” Her eyes widened and her lip trembled.

“But I don’t want cotton in my mouth.”

“More like you don’t want to shut up,” Clayton muttered, and Frank hit him much less gently. Kinga’s trembling lip and wide eyes started to tip the balance into wailing, but as she inhaled for the initial scream, Max caught her around the waist and picked her up and spun her around.

“You know what?” he said, and startled out of the crying cycle, she just blinked at him. “I don’t have a snickerdoodle recipe. We should go find one so I can try making those tomorrow. I bet these cookies will be ready to eat by the time we find one.”

“O-okay,” she said, and he set her down. “Where do we find one?”

“In a recipe book, of course. Here, I’ll take this one and you take that one… do you know how to spell snickerdoodle?” He pushed a heavy book into her arms and she latched onto it.

“S-N-I-K-R-D-U-D-L,” she spelled out, and he bit back a laugh.

“That’s not quite it. Come on, we can check the indexes to find it and then I’ll show you how it’s spelled.” He lead her out of the kitchen. Clayton looked at Frank with his brows arched, and Frank shrugged one shoulder.

“It’s a good thing he’s better at distracting her than you are.” He picked up a spatula and tested one of the cookies before moving it to a plate. Clayton reached for the cookie and Frank smacked his hand with the spatula. “Clay! Seriously? You _just_ told Kinga not to do that.”

“It’s not on the hot pan any more…”

“Please give me an excuse to stuff your mouth and wrap it shut.”

“You’re really bad at innuendo.”

“You’re really bad at… being anything except really bad,” Frank said, and Clayton beamed and kissed him on the cheek.

“It’s always nice to have my talents recognized.”

“Get out of my kitchen, you menace. You have pink all over you. So does your daughter, for that matter.”

“So do you now,” Clayton said, rubbing the dust he’d left on Frank’s cheek off, and he shot one last avaricious look at the cookies before heading off to wash up and then to come after his daughter with a washcloth.

\---

“Where did you put them?” The lab was a cluttered mess, but that didn’t stop Kinga from moving things around even more haphazardly while she searched.

“Where did I put what?” Max asked, carefully setting down the solution he’d been mixing. They’d been working on the gene manipulation for weeks, but he knew from experience that it didn’t take much to distract Kinga’s attention from what was actually important.

“The snickerdoodles. Where did you put them? I can smell them.”

“You’re out of your mind. There are no cookies here.”

“Then how come the whole room smells like cookies?”

“Maybe you’re having a stroke.”

“I thought that was the smell of toast.” She let a stack of books fall to the countertop with a thump, then turned to pout at him. “If there aren’t cookies, there should be cookies.”

“Do you know how many hazardous chemicals are in this room? I’m not making cookies in the lab.”

“I didn’t say you had to make them in the lab.”

“Oh, are you going to release me from my indentured servitude at these test tubes? We’ve been at this for ages and you keep going off on tangents. I’m the only one with any focus here.”

“Don’t whine about it,” she said, coming over to look over his shoulder. “What are you doing now?”

“Propagating stem cells, like you told me to do this morning,” he sighed. “You know, this would go faster if you were helping instead of tearing apart the lab…”

“I wouldn’t be tearing apart the lab if it didn’t smell like vanilla and cinnamon sugar in here,” she said, then paused, blinked, and leaned in to bury her nose in his hair. “Oh, _not fair_. You’re not allowed to use that shampoo any more, what the hell.”

“What are you talking about?” He tilted his head back to look up at her. 

“What, is it mousse? There’s something in your hair that is taunting me with cookie smell. I’m not okay with it.”

“Oh! Uh, when I went to get coffee from the commissary someone was spritzing body spray. Seriously, I smell like that? I only walked past her.” He sniffed and his nose wrinkled. “I don’t smell it. Are you sure you’re not losing your mind?”

“I’m not huffing you for the fun of it. I’m pretty sure I know what I smell,” she said, but her face fell. “It’s not cookies. It’s that damn warm vanilla sugar smell. What a ripoff.”

“If you’re that desperate for cookies, you could… I don’t know… put on a pair of goggles and pick up a pipette and help me finish this faster so I can go bake them for you,” he said, rolling his eyes, and she huffed and went to dig her goggles out of the pile she’d been making on the other table. “I don’t know how I got stuck doing _all_ the work on this cockamamie idea anyways.”

“You should be used to it by now.”

“Somehow, I live in hope that one day I’ll be recognized as the talent driving all of your breakthroughs.”

“What breakthroughs?”

“Exactly.” She smacked the back of his head and he sighed again. “Look, half of these cultures are done. You take those and I’ll finish these and we’ll be out of here in an hour.”

“And then cookies?”

“You have the most one-track mind of anyone I know.”

“To be fair, your baking is worth getting hung up on.”

“I guess I’ll take whatever compliments I can get from you.” She took a tray of cultures and moved a little ways down the table, the only clear workspace left in the room, and he shot her a sideways glance. “Do you actually want snickerdoodles or was that only what you thought you smelled?”

“That’s a stupid question. I always want snickerdoodles.”

“Well, excuse me for double-checking your preferences against your hallucinations.”

“It’s not a hallucination! You smell like cookies!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shut up.”

“Shutting up.” The silence didn’t last long. He cast a couple of glances in her direction and then flung out a hand. “No don’t do that!”

“What?”

“Don’t put that in there unless your plan is to kill the whole sample. Where’s your head at?”

“My head is in your kitchen waiting for cookies.”

“Kinga…” He put down his pipette and dropped his head into his hands. “You know, I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s like you have a cookie circuit in your brain that overrides higher functioning once it trips.”

“Oh, like you don’t have things that turn your brain off too.” He lifted his head and gave her a skeptical look.

“I can’t afford to have my brain turned off when I’m doing stuff for you or it might literally blow up in my face.” It didn’t seem pertinent to add that the only thing that made him that stupid was her and he’d had decades of practice working past that. “Look, if you’re that distracted, let’s just call it for the day. Because you’re going to bitch if I make you wait for me to finish it myself.”

“You know me so well,” she chirped, getting up to find a cover for the tray, and he shook his head and sealed up what he was working on. Apparently his primary job today was snickerdoodle duty. He hoped the momentary satisfaction of the cookies would head off the longer-term irritation of the project stretching out even longer.

\---

“Don’t touch those,” Max said, whacking Kinga’s hand with a spatula as she reached for one of the cookies heaped next to him.

“Ow! Give me a cookie.”

“No. Those aren’t for you.”

“Everything on this moon base is for me.”

“Not those. Those are for the Boneheads.”

“What, seriously?” She scowled at him, and he wielded the spatula threateningly. “I can’t even have one?”

“You never have one. You stick one in your mouth and take three to go.”

“It’s my right as the ruler of this moon base.”

“You don’t even like these.”

“They’re cookies. I like them.”

“No, you won’t. I made them for Bonehead tastebuds.”

“So? They’re cookies.”

“You don’t like super-dark chocolate and unsweetened cocoa.”

“Ew, really? Why would you do that to a cookie?”

“They have more bitter taste receptors than we do. Come on, did you never even read that report I wrote?”

“I might have skimmed it.”

“That’s why they like lemonade without sugar.”

“It’s not lemonade if it doesn’t have sugar in it. It’s just lemon water.”

“I don’t think it’s _just_ lemon water when it’s half lemon juice.” The timer beeped and Max stooped to pull another couple of trays of cookies out of the oven. Kinga cast an avaricious gaze over them, and he glared at her when he turned around. “You just hate hearing that you can’t have something.”

“Well, _yeah_.” 

“Honestly, did you think I would make cookies and not make some for you? I’m offended that you think I’m that thoughtless.”

“I don’t see any cookies for me here,” she said, looking around at the hundreds of nearly black cookies in stacks on serving trays. He rolled his eyes.

“I’m making yours last because I know you like them right out of the oven. Now will you go away and leave me to do this? You’re stressing me out.”

“But it’s more fun to bother you,” she said, leaning against the counter opposite the oven. “Isn’t there a Bonehead to do this stuff, anyways? I know at least one of them likes to bake.”

“Ed never gets to eat anything he didn’t bake himself. And it’s a Bonehead holiday.”

“Boneheads have holidays?” Max rolled his eyes again.

“It’s the anniversary of the day the first pod came out of the tanks. It’s like a… cultural birthday party. Seriously, you’re pulling my leg now, right? How do you not know this?”

“Of course I know this,” she lied. “I just wanted to see how you’d explain it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t have to be that interested in the lives of my minions.”

“ _I’m_ one of your minions.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t come out of a-- you didn’t come out of _my_ test tube.” She corrected course when he glared at her. “You’re human.”

“Just because they’re only half human doesn’t mean you should treat them like they’re sub-human.”

“Look, if you want to run group hugs with the creations, no one’s stopping you. I’m just not here for it.” A very tall Bonehead poked his head around the doorway when she was in the middle of her sentence, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes?”

“I, uh-- Max asked for my help, I’m sorry I’m late, I just got caught up at the end of my shift and--”

“Don’t worry about it, Ray,” Max said, and Kinga’s eyes narrowed as she stared through the hole in his bucket. Right. The special, specially troublesome Bonehead. He blinked back at her and tried to retreat back through the doorway. “No, it’s fine, come in. How’s the party setup going?”

“I think it’s going okay? It looked like it was going okay. Gabby was kind of, um, yelling a lot, but she wasn’t yelling at _me_. She didn’t seem angry. Just stressed out.” Ray came over to them, effortlessly towering over both the mad scientist and her second banana. Kinga’s unfriendly look didn’t let up.

“Yeah, that’ll happen. Here, taste this.” Max handed Ray a cookie still warm from the oven and Ray shot a nervous glance at Kinga. “Ignore her.”

“Is that safe?”

“No,” Kinga said. “It’s not safe. Max is trying to get you killed.” Ray turned wide eyes on Max, who sighed and waved the spatula at her again.

“Will you go away! I’ll bring you your cookies later, this is my last batch for the Boneheads. I promise, you’ll be gorging yourself on snickerdoodles in an hour.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said, pushing herself off the counter. “I’m setting my watch.”

“You don’t wear a watch.”

“I’m making a mental note of the time.”

“When do I ever lie to you?” She didn’t have a smart answer for that. She just wrinkled her nose at him and made her exit. Max sighed and started using the spatula to move the fresh cookies onto a new tray. “Well? Taste it. I know how it tastes to me, but I’m not baking for me.” Ray waited for a moment after Kinga left, put down the cookie, took off his helmet, and picked the cookie back up with a smile.

“Well, it _smells_ really good…” He paused with the cookie an inch from his mouth. “What do you bake when you’re baking for yourself?”

“You know, you’re the first person who’s ever asked me that?”

“Really?”

“You want to know a secret?”

“Yeah!”

“I don’t even really like cookies that much,” Max said in a whisper. “I like cupcakes better. Red velvet cupcakes.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Ray said, and bit into the cookie he’d been given. “Mm!”

“Is that good?”

“Yeah! It’s really good. It’s bittersweet. I like it.”

“Bittersweet has become my inadvertent specialty,” Max sighed, but he looked pleased. “It’s not too soft, is it?”

“I don’t like crunchy cookies. This is good.”

“Okay, awesome.” Max finished moving the cookies over and regarded the four heaping trays piled with cookies. “Do you think this is enough?”

“I mean, I think they’ll be more focused on what Cherry’s bringing than what you’re bringing. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“It’s really nice of you to bake for us,” Ray said, and popped the other half of the cookie in his mouth. “Mmrph mrr.”

“Come again?” Ray swallowed and tried again.

“Thank you.”

“Oh… you’re welcome.” Max looked startled to be thanked. Ray beamed at him and Max couldn’t help but smile back. “Think you can help me get these all up to the party?”

“I remembered the cart you asked me to bring, it’s just outside in the hallway.”

“Awesome. Once we get these loaded up, I can start getting Kinga’s ready.”

“You’re not coming to the party?” 

“I’m not a Bonehead. The party isn’t for me.”

“You should come anyways,” Ray said, and Max looked up at him curiously. “I mean, you are… kind of the closest thing to a dad the Boneheads have. Because you were there when all of us came out of the tanks. I don’t think anyone would mind if you showed up.”

“I, uh… you… really think that?” Max blinked rapidly to keep his eyes from welling up, and Ray shrugged.

“Yeah? A lot of us do. But you probably shouldn’t disappoint Kinga or she’ll be mad at you for like, ever.”

“Don’t worry about Kinga,” Max said, and he went over to the fridge to pull out a plastic-wrapped roll of pale dough. “I made hers last night. They just have to be baked. C’mon, help me load up the cart. These take like twelve minutes to bake, I have to bring them up to her, and then I’ll head up to the party, okay?”

“You’ll be getting there right as it gets into the full swing of things!” Ray said cheerfully, and when he dipped out into the hall to grab the cart Max swiped at his eyes with the flour-dusted cuff of his coat. It was shockingly rare for any of his sweet gestures to be reciprocated. He just hoped he wouldn’t start crying in the middle of the party.


End file.
